Thursday, June 01, 2006

I need a new hobby ...

... like I need a hole in my head. Yet, I think I want to learn to quilt.

Here's the dilemma: I work 2 jobs. One is a full-time (40 hours) professional job. The other is a 20-hour a week coaching job. I love both of them.

I also drive to both jobs. To get to the Real Job in the morning takes 45 minutes. Several days a week, I share the commute with the husband, and it ends up taking 60-75 minutes. I drive him into his office, which is about 10-15 minutes past my office, and then back to my office. Then, to drive from Real Job to Coaching Job after work can take anywhere from 50-75 minutes. Driving to Coaching Job on the weekends only takes about 25 minutes. (I live about halfway between Coaching Job and Real Job.)

Anyways, the point of that last paragraph was just to say that commuting to and from work takes about 10-12 hours per week, on top of the 60 that I work. So, I really do NOT have time for a new hobby.

Yet, look what was on my living room floor last night ....

This is a quilt top that I pieced together a long time ago. Well before this blog. Probably 2 years ago. Then, I never did anything with it.

Now, to say that I "pieced a quilt top" would imply a lot more skill than I actually possess. What I really did was sew together 9 squares of fabric and add a mitred border. Apparently mitred borders are not supposed to be that easy. Nobody told me that. I just went online and figured out how to do it. No closeups, but it looks pretty good to me.

The red squares are a dog-themed print. I am a dog lover who can't have a dog for many reasons:(a) no-pets lease(b) aforementioned lack of time to take care of a dog(c) allergic husband

So, I thought that a doggy-blanket would be cute. Here is a close-up of a few areas of the fabric, with basting threads visible:

You can also see some chalk lines about an inch from the border of each square. I'm going to make a stab at hand-quilting this, just as a learning piece. I'll donate the finished blanket to an animal shelter, I think. Then, I want to make a Denyse Schmidt quilt.